Week 4
In this week’s lecture I had to read the article called Decisions under risk and uncertainty (1): Utility measurement and expected utility
Theory

This article explained what made people make such risky decisions. And what was the outcome of them taking such decisions. The concept of decision making and uncertainty: utility measurement and expected utility is a straightforward understanding of the theory. However, Daniel Bernoulli’s idea of expected utility decayed the valuation of a risky venture as the sum of utilities from outcomes weighted by the probabilities of outcomes. Specifically, Bernoulli's assumption of diminishing marginal utility seemed to imply that, in a gamble, a gain would increase utility less than a decline would reduce it.
Consequently, many concluded, the willingness to take on risk must be "irrational", and thus the issue of choice under risk or uncertainty was viewed suspiciously, or at least considered to be outside the realm of an economic theory which assumed rational actors. Throughout reading this article I realised that it wasn’t as difficult to understand as I though but what mostly interested me is the fact knowing how decision can be made and under what circumstances make people take certain decision. I also realised that that each group members had their own interpretation of the theory even though they were working as a group.

Week 3

In this week my group and I were given an article called reasoning the fast and the frugal way. However, this article fascinated me tremendously because some of the models I read in the article stating basically that how people integrate one item to make judgment for instance their make judgement based on one reason. Although one of the report suggested that when teachers, physicians and other professions claims that they use seven or criteria to make judgement but in an experimental test it showed that they in fact often used only one criterion (Shepard 1976). After reading the article more then twice in order to give me a more depth understanding I realised and what interested me is that human and animals makes inferences about the world under limited time and knowledge’s.

However later throughout the lecture two of my group members gave a presentation regarding the article that we had prepared. Moreover, seeing the other group give their presentation interested me because I got to acknowledge their understanding and additional information regarding the article that my group and I forgot to add or understand probably.

Week 2

Week one lecture was about introducing the module judgement and decision making. As David Hardman the module teacher went through the assessment that all the students including me were going to undertake during the course of this semester.He then stated that it was based on coursework although this type of courswork is not only based on written material whereby all the students had to take part in discussion and at the end of the lecture depending what group the student had been allocated had to go up and present the topic that was chosen for the week.

However, doing presentation is not my cup of tea as they say as I don’t enjoy doing presentation because I end up feeling anxious when I’m about to present the topic that I’ve been prepared for. But seeing people go up and present their given topic I feel more comfortable and encouraged to not be afraid doing my presentation. For me doing presentation I see it as a courage and you got to have that confidence to be able to do it. One thing that had impressed me very much is the discussions that every week my group and I undertake. And what so fascinating is participating in these discussions because it gives you (me) an inside view of what my follow group members and how they thinking. Listening to what my group member’s idea and opinion about the article also broadens my thinking and expands my ideas being creative.

Zina Kahdum